Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ankalagon 1642 days ago
Is there any known/public system that use ReactOS? Is there a goal for this OS? a use-case? Any dev-story I can read?

I'm not criticizing their work or passion, au contraire, it's a spectacular effort the developers are doing, developing an OS with the same API than Windows 2000 from scratch. For me they are giants.
2 comments
Klaster_1 1642 days ago
There are numerous reports (all in russian) of ReactOS used for cash registers in an Ukrainian convenience store chain:

https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/513804/#comment_219...

https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/303618/comments/#co...

https://habr.com/ru/company/reactos/blog/164225/comments/#co...

https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314

https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B5...

link
gavinray 1642 days ago
What an incredibly strange Google-translated read in the comments this was:

https://habr.com/ru/post/208614/comments/#comment_7183314

Where did you find/remember this from?

link
Klaster_1 1641 days ago
>Where did you find/remember this from?

ReactOS writeups on Habr are always an entertaining read, similar in nature to console emulator change blogs. Over the years, you just remember the often mentioned cash register anecdote.

link
ogogmad 1642 days ago
Not a SWE, but I imagine ReactOS constitutes executable (and therefore rigorous) documentation for how Windows and its API works. This could be helpful if you are programming directly against the Windows API and the official docs are not complete.

A long time ago, the ReactOS devs gave an example of someone consulting the ReactOS code to understand how some component of the Windows API worked.

link
spicybright 1642 days ago
It's pretty interesting how it does this too.

Legally they can't copy source code from windows, so they have to do something called block box reverse engineering.

That just means they can't look at the code, but they can try to copy exactly how the code works. This is for legal/copyright reasons.

It's really impressive so far. Windows is a complicated beast that has been built up since the early 90's without much old functionality being thrown out.

link
donkarma 1642 days ago
I know some communities use the kernel code as reference a lot
link